


I Picked a Peach

by BranHowe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Friends, Gen, Personal story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23131876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BranHowe/pseuds/BranHowe
Summary: A remembrance of a childhood friend.
Kudos: 2





	I Picked a Peach

Today I picked a peach. It was round and tender and it smelled really good, and the skin covered with velvety moss reminded me of his ears. Peaches always remind me of him.

My childhood friend.

His hair was dark enough to make his clear eyes pale, he had a slim and slender body and if you looked close enough, his milky skin, his cheeks, his ears were surrounded by that velvety and soft feeling, covered with an interminable amount of soft and light fuzz. His gaze used to be frowning most times. He was rather short, shorter than me at least. 

But he was my friend.

Both of us had problems, or rather, both of our parents had problems with each other, being divorced and all. His parents were always fighting when they met, mine just didn’t bother trying to have a sociable treatment anymore. And they must have believed we didn’t understand that we were being used as dealing devices. We loved both our parents, but we were not allowed to show our feelings for each of them in front of the other. 

We were born in the generation of hurtful breakups and broken relationships.

So he killed bugs. He had a pellet gun with which he shot bugs against the wall, he also had an army knife that he pierced through their bodies. And I watched. I watched how the small defenseless bugs moved their little extremities trying to get free and pin themselves out of the blade. 

Despite the cruelty, he used to protect me as well. He shooed away the bugs that scared me, and always looked after me. If I was cold he gave me his sweater and I felt secure when I was lying besides him watching anything on the tv.

I have a very clear memory of my parents, fighting one in front of the other, I was sitting on the bed and was looking from one angry face towards the other, shouting things and moving arms. Today it makes me think of a morbid mock of a tennis match. Once I cried a lot recalling that image when I grew up. 

But that is not the first memory of my life I have. The very first memory I possess is one where I was lying face up, watching through an elliptical window and seeing small faces looking down at me, and many tall trees falling towards the sky. My parents had one of those old beetles back then and they had gone on a picnic with the whole family to a forest nearby. I was a baby and they had left me in the back trunk, it didn’t have a lid on it and all of my cousins, older than me and no longer babies anymore were looking at me through the window. It was very hot inside the closed, stagnant air of the car, but they tell me that it was a really cold day.

And so I, who didn’t understand people, met him. And we got along pretty well. We hung out in recess, ate lunch together and looked for each other. I felt sure next to him, just because he didn’t force me to be or act as someone that I was not. Because he must probably have gone through the same thing. 

I thought that this would keep on forever but forever is a long time, specially when you’re just starting to live.

I think that what broke the happiness bubble was that particular day. His mother was driving, mine was sitting shotgun and we were on the back. I was behind his mother’s seat, he was behind my mother’s seat. We looked at each other, he smiled at me and I smiled back. And then he grabbed my hand, and I held mine in his. And so while I looked outside the window, he asked my mother:

”Ma’am, can I marry your daughter?” 

I could feel how the car went completely silent, one of those odd and heavy atmospheres that people tend to say can be cut up with a knife. I don’t know what kind of face I made, but I turned back at him, looked at his certain gaze and blushed like no other time before that.

And my mother laughed.

Her laughter was harsh, cynical and dull. She somehow managed to put all her hatred towards the concept of marriage into one single awkward sound that came out repeatedly from her mouth. And then she turned towards him and babbled something about the fact that we were far too young for something like that.

Just like that, she waved off any chance for me to have a stable relationship.

And it probably was not her fault but at that moment I realized that marriage was not a good thing, that it broke people apart and made everyone miserable. Just like my mother, just like my friend’s mother, just like me. And I didn’t want to lose him, not my friend, so I made an unconscious decision of never involving any sort of love within a pure friendship like the one I had with him. I made a wall between any kind of love and friendship, between me and life.

Little by little, I stupidly tried to distance myself from him. I started to hang out with other people and shooed him away. I stepped away in order to stay as close as ever. I was afraid of his love. I was a fool. 

Time passed by, we stepped out of that elementary school and into a new, different one for 7th grade and got further apart than before. Once I saw a guy who looked a lot like him on the street, but I never had enough courage to ask him if he was that friend I had lost. 

Then I got pregnant at 14 years old, it obviously was my mistake. I did it because I was an idiot, because I felt like there was no one who actually needed me in this world. I felt disposable and alone. And I desperately wanted to feel indispensable or I would’ve killed myself. 

My mother always complained about me whenever she had to be close to me, and my aunt always locked me in my room because ‘outside was very dangerous’ and I was never allowed to go out and play and live. I only had books as friends. I don’t complain about that though, I like books, I liked going places where no one could find me in my mind.

I think he must have known someone from my school, because he called me once. It was a short call, shorter than what I would’ve wished for. He asked for me, I answered back and after a brief greeting he told me he knew I was pregnant and that he wished me the best. He immediately hung up.

I never heard anything new about him after that. Some comments from my mother, she was friends with his mother anyways, for some time after that at least. He dropped school once, went back later, dropped it once more I believe. He got into drugs and then he tried to get into the army, but as his father once had got them into a car crash when he was young, he was not physically apt. 

No more news.

My mother must have stopped her contact with his mom, that or his relationship with her was null. I had never been able to ask directly about him anymore.

I wonder if I ever saw him as a man. I know well that I didn’t understand people then and still don’t understand them now, I knew marriage was never a good thing and that it would break up relationships and love, I knew that he was the only friend I had. 

Sometimes I wish I could search for him, look after that broken bond. But I am too afraid of finding out what would happen then. Would he talk back to me? Would he still hate me? Would he still love me? Would he, at least, remember me? 

What stops me the most is the fact that I am so selfish, that I would still try to have him by my side as the friend he was once despite all the suffering I gave him. And no person deserves something as horrible as that.

And so today I pick up a peach and remember him. 

And wish him well.


End file.
